as I was going through doing my now routine listen on the sysmap I heard it bubbling. I thought I misheard for sure but I headed out there and sure enough, water world with ammonia atmosphere.
Even the polar cap doesnt tell me anything since the very similar, brown world right next to it with a polar cap is a high metal with nitrogen atmosphere.

Class III giants make a subtle bubbling sound, it is much quieter than it is with water worlds or water giants but it could be mistaken for signs of water. (not that I'd ever make that mistake and fly 12kls because of it or anything. )

High Metals make a sound very much like earthlikes with musical tones and no bubbling, and they can appear very blue under a blue star. The 'guitar' sound doesn't kick in for 40 seconds or so sometimes, so don't get fooled and fly 20k ls out thinking it's an earthlike, again not a mistake I would ever make or anything... just saying.

Yes, another problem of visuals is that every star has a different spectrum, so different kind of stars can "color" differently the objects they light. We all saw pink icy moons orbiting brown dwarves.
I spotted a red water world that turned out to be pitch black: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...ht=dark+waters

And then it can happen something like it happened to you yesterday: a Blue planet that didn't sound like water, you went there and was a brownish high metal coloured blue by a type A.

Also definitly gas giants sounds different from class, and even their ring composition gives a different tone.

I would like to keep the guide easy and neat, so i doubt i'll insert information about gas giants, the interesting ones for this guide is if it bears life or not.

Regarding star colouring i would wait to have more data before changing the guide, but i'm definitly thinking to add a bunch of pictures. So everyone that spots a strange coloured planet FROM SYSTEM MAP that ends up not beeing what expected could please take a system map picture and post here.

Can confirm that, but it's very similar to another tone Of high metals, so it's confusing. Would like to test more on the subject though. Knowing clear differences between ELW and High Metals would immensly add to this guide

Does this make it 100% predictable? Part of me thinks this takes away some of the fun of exploring - racing 100kls to look at a potential ELW and find out its not even terraformable. If it were possible to be accurate all the time I think it would take away some of the fun. I'd prefer a system where it were only reliable maybe 2/3 of the time.

OP : good work.
If it helps your first post, you can tell them that only the icon on the left is for water based life(and ammonia) ? that will help narrow it down, but they still need to listen to it to see if it is water or ammonia ?

OP : good work.
If it helps your first post, you can tell them that only the icon on the left is for water based life(and ammonia) ? that will help narrow it down, but they still need to listen to it to see if it is water or ammonia ?

Yeah using the sounds combined with the holo images tells you almost everything you need to know. Out of curiosity, do you know if type III giants use a different holo icon than that first one that ammonia and water life giants use?

Does this make it 100% predictable? Part of me thinks this takes away some of the fun of exploring - racing 100kls to look at a potential ELW and find out its not even terraformable. If it were possible to be accurate all the time I think it would take away some of the fun. I'd prefer a system where it were only reliable maybe 2/3 of the time.

It's 100% once you learn the sounds, Ive got it all down now and am trying to discern any difference between terraformables and whether rings change the sound.
I suppose it can ruin the surprise if the fun part for you is the 200k ls slog out to the suspect rock. For me the fun part is just finding it. Generally Ill only stop the music and crank up the system map when something looks really interesting but its a long trip, or to help identify different giants. I discovered an earthlike last night with the method and there was no loss of enjoyment. I heard the bird chirping and chord music and THEN got excited and made the flight out and took a bunch of pictures and did the usual excitement thing. It's just another detection tool, for me the only thing it prevents is disappointment from thinking its something good, spending 15 minutes to get to it and then charging the FSD, frustrated.

Does this make it 100% predictable? Part of me thinks this takes away some of the fun of exploring - racing 100kls to look at a potential ELW and find out its not even terraformable. If it were possible to be accurate all the time I think it would take away some of the fun. I'd prefer a system where it were only reliable maybe 2/3 of the time.

Yes, combination of holo icons and sounds makes it 100% predictable and it even feels like cheating sometimes!!!
In every system i'm visiting i'm scanning only what i find interesting, leaving everything else behind, and i fear that scan completionits will hate me now.
Earth Like Worlds are still tricky though: it's very difficult to distinguish them from High Metals, so they still pose a problem. But we are still looking into this matter too.

Also you should notice that, if an object is rare, it will be rare even if you know how to spot them. I won't miss an ammonia world anymore, but scanned only 3 in my entire career, for example.

It I discovered an earthlike last night with the method and there was no loss of enjoyment. I heard the bird chirping and chord music and THEN got excited and made the flight out and took a bunch of pictures and did the usual excitement thing. It's just another detection tool, for me the only thing it prevents is disappointment from thinking its something good, spending 15 minutes to get to it and then charging the FSD, frustrated.

So you confirm bird chirping for ELW? Was it clear? i didn't notice that clear, but since you are the second to report i will update OP later.

Should each planet sound the same each time I click on it? As in, I click on an ELW and hear the chirpy bird sound, click on the rocky moon next to it and hear very little, then click on the ELW again and hear a different sound than before that is much more like a High Metal Planet.

Should each planet sound the same each time I click on it? As in, I click on an ELW and hear the chirpy bird sound, click on the rocky moon next to it and hear very little, then click on the ELW again and hear a different sound than before that is much more like a High Metal Planet.

thank you for putting this together.

I'm sure Akira will back me up on this, but so far everything weve seen indicates there is some variety in the planet sounds per type. I.E. high metal has two to three tracks it plays (which sound similar) and earthlikes appear to have 2-3 tracks that they play as well (which also sound similar). The similarity between earthlikes and high metals has been addressed earlier on in the thread, and its been suggested that for potential earthlikes you'll need to listen a little longer because one of the high metals has a long "intro" track in which you do not hear the metal guitar for about 30-40 seconds, or if its an earthlike and you listen for that time without hearing the metal string chords, it should be an ELP.

Basically, no, not every planet is exactly the same as others of its type since there's multiple tracks but the variety is predictable and learn-able and the different tracks share enough in common to use the descriptions as guidelines.

If youve heard an earthlike that is completely different from what is described in this thread please let us know so we can adjust the known sounds or re-examine the technique.